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If the Planning Minister would ensure that it's not nearly impossible to get planning for residential development and that there was at minimum an adequate supply of developable land, then design would improve. Developers would be willing to take more risks on design if planners didn't always use the fact that a design looks out of the ordinary as a reason for refusal, it wouldn't be such a financial gamble then to spend a little more time and budget on design, and the volume housebuilders might finally have to compete based upon quality and design rather than dealing with a captive market where selling houses is not dissimilar from 'shooting fish in a barrel'. It's so blatantly simple a concept that it's nauseating the way it's overlooked...